Shelf Life
by stargazercmc
Summary: Five things that would have happened had CJ taken the job the Santos Administration offered.
1. Toby

**Disclaimer: **If I owned The West Wing, I'd make Aaron Sorkin my cabana boy.  
**Notes: **This was written for majorsamfan who requested "Five things that would have happened had CJ taken the job the Santos Administration offered."

* * *

She has plenty of time to study that Takings Clause of Toby's.

Two years turn into four swifter than she cares to think about, so she doesn't. She ends the fourth year by turning in her security clearance for an actual holiday season. Since Josh isn't there to yell in her ear, her mind finds other things to puzzle out. And recently, she thinks about the complexity of one stray comma found by one of her oldest friends.

Here's what she doesn't think about: she ignores that she barely knows Toby anymore. She learned early into the Santos administration the fragile reach of an olive branch – it stretches about as far as the doors to the building in the center of Pennsylvania Avenue. She decides to pass through them each day for another four years. And when Toby quits returning her calls, she knows this is the fluid nature of relationships.

Now that she's done, she studies the Takings Clause. She wonders how one comma can change things so much.


	2. Danny

She wonders what would have happened if she'd been able to talk to him.

She can't blame him for not staying when she takes the job. He waited seven years at the chance for them to be together, and she makes the decision knowing full well what it means for them.

Once he's gone, she lets herself remember. She remembers the giddy feeling he gave her the first time they kissed. She remembers measuring the weight of her professional ethics and the pain that came with it. She remembers the warmth and panic she felt when she knew he was back in her life.

She barely remembers the times they made love. She knows it was good, alternately hot and sweet. She wishes she hadn't felt so disconnected – he could tell she was holding back. She wishes it would have been back when she could still feel, before the felling of a good man by a common thief. Danny doesn't deserve the fallout from her leftover grief. He knows this. He tells her before he leaves her on Inauguration Day.

As she shakes food into the fishbowl each day, she hope that Gail understands.


	3. Dad

She exits the plane in early afternoon. She puts on sunglasses as she leaves the airport and crosses to the garage. Fumbling with the keys to the rental car, she finally pops the trunk and tosses her luggage inside.

She leaves the radio off. Instead, she listens to the sounds of the small city and the stream of midday Dayton traffic. Opening the car windows shakes the scent of canned airplane oxygen embedded in her nostrils. The late summer air has cooled, but the open breeze in her hair seems more fitting for a pilgrimage anyway.

The birds chirp loudly against the stillness as she pulls into the churchyard parking lot. There's a beautiful sky this trip – all sunshine and blue with no clouds. The trees rustle from a slight gust of wind that kicks up a falling of orange and red leaves.

CJ takes her time meandering through the graveyard. As a child, her mother would bring her to make sure she was unafraid. This is your family. They will never hurt you. They will only protect you. She isn't sure if she believed her mother then, but she does know that as an adult, she has never feared this place.

She finally reaches her parents' grave site and kneels down for a quick prayer. "Dad," she says. "I'm here."

She missed his death by three hours. She comes each year.


	4. The Roads

"Wilson, get Sam and send him to CJ's office. _Now_." CJ hears Josh bark at the hapless intern before she ever makes visual contact. Even after a decade of service in the White House, the man has never learned the subtle art of using a telephone rather than bellowing across a room.

"So did we get him?" he asks, sticking his head around the door.

"No, Josh. We didn't. And why you thought me talking to that jackass would make a difference, I'll never get." The best part about being the person who formerly held the job of Chief of Staff is being able to freely express herself with the current one. "What about you?" she asks.

She doesn't expect much. The Santos administration, as predicted, is on the receiving end of every type of financial block from a Republican party still sore at losing a razor-thin midterm election race. The latest chopping-block fare is a funding proposal to provide medical relief for a Sudanese drought.

"No-go with Martin," Josh says. "He's on board with helping sick kids, but he won't commit political suicide when there's no clear route for transporting meds. If we don't get Kennedy, that's it."

Sam appears at the end of Josh's lament. "We're not getting Kennedy. He said he won't go without Martin."

"And there goes Sullivan," she adds.

The hardest days, she thinks, are the ones when she could use 10 billion dollars to build a road.


	5. Pursuit of Happiness

After leaving the Santos administration, CJ fades into the background of the political world fairly easily. The press follows her for a few days (with the noticeable exception of the one person she would welcome), but they quiet when she moves to a suburban subdivision in Maryland.

After the unpacking is done, she knows she should think about starting the rest of her life. Instead, she spends the fourth day in her house stretched out on her couch with one of her five copies of the Declaration of Independence. Toby gave her this particular copy during Barlet's first term, claiming that the pocket-sized versions were easier and more satisfying to throw at Sam.

Skimming through the dog-eared booklet, she thinks about inalienable rights. She knows her work was noble. She isn't sorry for her past decisions. She made her choices, and she can't be afraid of them now. But she also knows that the kitchen in her new home echoes when she brings down a coffee cup in the morning.

A flash of orange gets her up off the couch and over near the sun room table stand. As she approaches the 10-year-old fishbowl, CJ thinks maybe, just maybe, she has finally earned her own pursuit of happiness. She feeds Gail Jr. and hopes that Danny will take her call.


End file.
